Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX vs. 285K CPUs Head-to-Head - Desktop Power in a Laptop Form Factor

Introduction and Intel Core Ultra 285HX Specifications

Back when we reviewed Intel's Core Ultra 9 285K, we were impressed by its relative power efficiency and multi-threading prowess, though its gaming performance left a lot to be desired. But it's that first point that's particularly relevant when it comes to evaluating laptop CPUs. Power efficiency is arguably the most critical factor for a laptop, and given that it is a strength of Arrow Lake compared to its 14th Gen Raptor Lake predecessors, it is well-suited to high-performance laptops without resorting to unreasonable TDPs and high-pitched screaming fans.

The Core Ultra 9 285HX is Intel's flagship laptop CPU. The silicon is essentially the same as that of the 285K, differing only by clock speed and TDP. It's an 8P-16E core design including eight Lion Cove P-cores and sixteen Skymont E-cores.

The 285HX's P-cores have a 2.8GHz base clock and a 5.5GHz boost clock. The E-cores have a 3.2GHz base clock and a 4.6GHz boost clock. Intel rates the 285HX with a PL2 of 160W, which is 93W less than the 250W of the 285K. While 160W is a lot for a laptop form factor, its 55W PL1 TDP can be happily managed by the cooling assembly of a high-end gaming laptop; that's assuming laptop manufacturers stick to Intel's specifications, though.

Both the 285HX and 285K's P-cores include their own dedicated 3MB of L2 cache, while each of the four E-core clusters shares 4MB of L2 cache among them. The P-cores and E-core clusters share a common L3 cache, which totals 36MB. The total L2 and L3 cache adds up to 76MB.

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Alongside the general-purpose cores, the 285HX includes a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) with up to 36 TOPS of performance, which is only slightly less than the 37 TOPS of the 285K.

Though integrated graphics are less important in a gaming laptop equipped with a discrete GPU, both chips include graphics built on the Xe-LPG architecture. Apart from DirectX 12 support, it contains high-spec media and display engines.

The total die area of both the 285HX and 285K is 243 mm², and their total transistor count is 17.8 billion. The compute, SoC, graphics, and I/O tiles are built on a mix of TSMC processes. The all-important compute tile is built with TSMC's advanced (and expensive) N3B process.

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The MSI Titan 18 HX AI, Specifications and Pricing

A beast of a laptop

For our testing, we received an MSI Titan 18 HX AI laptop, specifically the A2XWJG variant. It's fully kitted out with about the maximum spec available on the Intel BGA 2114 mobile platform. The Titan's Core Ultra 9 285HX CPU is joined by an RTX 5090 GPU, 64GB of DDR5-6400 memory, and 6TB of SSDs, consisting of three 2TB SSDs.

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A lovely 18-inch 3840 x 2400 MiniLED IPS 120Hz screen is a solid option that's well matched to a GPU with the power of an RTX 5090 with its powerful GB203 GPU. Would you prefer an OLED screen? I'll leave that for you to decide.

The purpose of this article isn't to review the MSI Titan 18 HX AI laptop. Our gaming laptop guru, Anthony Garreffa, handles those reviews. My aim here is to showcase the performance of the 285HX and compare it to the 285K across a range of CPU benchmarks.

Comparing the gaming performance of a laptop GPU to a desktop one would skew the results in favor of the less TDP-restrained desktop GPU. But, it's not a leap to say the 285HX will perform very similarly to a 285K in gaming if all partnering components were equal, particularly in graphically limited scenarios at high resolution and with lots of eye candy.

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A high-performance laptop CPU cannot be crammed into an Ultrabook form factor. It needs cooling, and the MSI Titan 18 contains large openings for its fans and heatsinks. It's far from the thickest or heaviest laptop I've ever seen, but this isn't a laptop that you'd want to carry around for too long, and you shouldn't expect a full day of use if you plan to load it up with heavy tasks. If you plan to game on the go, you'll get far less than that.

The MSI Titan 18 HX AI A2XWJG, as configured, will set you back $5,499. Only those with deep pockets need apply, but at the time of writing, it's actually $300 less than it cost at the time of its launch.

Core Ultra 9 285K Test System

The key components of our Core Ultra 9 285K test system were an MSI Z890 Unify-X motherboard and G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo RGB 2x16GB DDR5-6000 memory.

• Motherboard: MSI MEG Z890 Unify-X - Buy from Amazon
• GPU: MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3X - Buy from Amazon
• RAM: G.Skill Trident Z Neo RGB 2x16GB DDR5-6000 CL30 - Buy from Amazon
• Cooler: Cooler Master MasterLiquid PL360 Flux - Buy from Amazon
• OS Storage: Teamgroup T-Force Z540 2TB - Buy from Amazon
• Power Supply: Super Flower Leadex Titanium 850W - Buy from Amazon
• OS: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro - Buy from Amazon

Benchmarks - Rendering and Encoding

Cinebench 2024

Cinebench is a widely used rendering benchmark that makes for easy comparisons. The benchmark has two tests: a single-core workload that utilizes one thread, or 1T, and a multi-threaded test that uses all threads, or nT, of a tested CPU.

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The nT Cinebench test is a good example of how TDP and cooling capacity constrain the 285HX. Rendering is a real strength of the Arrow Lake CPU family.

Blender

A rendering application like Blender is just one of many reasons a user will consider a high-core-count CPU. We use the Whitelands demo file and record how long it takes to render the image.

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This is an excellent result for the 285HX. It's only 12 seconds slower than the 285K, which is very little for a test that takes over six and a half minutes to complete.

Handbrake

Handbrake is a simple-to-use video encoding and transcoding application. Here, we convert a 4K movie trailer to 1080p. The results below show the average FPS, where a higher result means the task will take less time to complete.

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Again, the 285HX gets to within touching distance of the less TDP-constrained 285K.

Benchmarks - File Compression

7-Zip

7-Zip is a commonly used free file compression and decompression app. It's susceptible to memory speed and latency changes and scales with the number of CPU threads.

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It's another solid result for the 285HX.

Benchmarks - PCMark and 3DMark

PCMark 10 Productivity

We'd love to use our PCs purely for leisure, but some of us have to work, too! The PCMark 10 productivity test performs a series of tests using office productivity applications.

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This is a strange result as the 285HX is much slower than the 285K. Some sub-tests are more memory-agnostic than others.

3DMark Time Spy Extreme

Time Spy Extreme is losing favor as a graphics benchmark in favor of Speed Way and Steel Nomad, but its CPU test is still a good measure of multi-core CPU performance.

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This is another test that shows the 285K with a strong lead. I ran it a couple of times with a monitoring tool. I concluded that 285HX CPU throttling is the reason for the discrepancy, as the Titan 18's cooling fans take a few seconds to ramp up, which accounts for a significant portion of the test duration.

Benchmarks - Power Consumption and Temperatures

Power

The 285HX has a 160W TDP, but we did see a short-term spike above 200W, though only briefly. After a few seconds of running Cinebench R24, long-term turbo power settled down to the 160W level, where it remained; that's significantly less than the 285K.

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TDP and cooling capacity are what separate the 285HX and 285K.

Comparing the temperatures of a 285K with a 360mm AIO cooler to those of a 285HX with a laptop cooling assembly is all but irrelevant; however, the MSI Titan HX 18 AI's cooling apparatus was able to keep the 285HX to a long-term temperature limit of 100 degrees Celsius. Do note that the Titan's fans are forced to run at a high RPM under heavy load. Though they are not exceedingly loud compared to some screamers, anyone using a top-spec laptop for heavy workloads will know that annoying fan noise is a necessary evil.

Final Thoughts

Despite the talk of Arrow Lake being lackluster under gaming workloads, it boasts real strengths, particularly in multi-threading workloads and power efficiency, compared to the 13th and 14th-gen mobile platforms. Power efficiency is critical for laptops, and Arrow Lake can maintain most of its performance even with the laptop TDP and cooling restrictions.

A laptop like the MSI Titan 18 HX AI with its top-end spec is about as good as it gets for a mobile platform. It's a true desktop replacement option. But should you buy one over a desktop? That's a difficult question to answer.

A desktop is more powerful, more configurable, and more upgradeable. It may also be cheaper. A laptop - even one as bulky as the MSI Titan 18 HX AI - remains a portable device that can be moved from home to office, campus, or wherever you prefer. Some will prefer the relative simplicity of an all-in-one machine or after-sales service typically offered by laptop manufacturers. It's truly plug and play. Some people don't really care what's under the hood. As long as it's fast. And it is.

But such laptops are costly. Spending over five grand on a laptop is a step too far for most. If you've got deep pockets, by all means, go for it. Perhaps your company might cough up for one, as it could easily be used as a mobile workstation.

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Personally, I'm a desktop guy. I prefer a powerful and quiet desktop, and a low-power, lightweight laptop for use on the road or in the air. But everyone performs different tasks and has various use cases.

If you're looking for the best, it's great to know that you can get a true beast of a laptop with most of the performance of a desktop 285K, and it'll surely come equipped with a GPU that will play all titles at 4K. Such a powerful CPU will result in a lot of fan noise if you push it hard, but hey, headphones will solve that problem.

What's apparent here is that the Core Ultra 9 285HX is a brutally powerful CPU. When paired with ample fast memory, RAID 0 SSDs, and a high-end GPU like the mobile RTX 5090, its performance surpasses that of all but the highest-end desktops, which is what it comes down to. It's fair to say that the 285HX is very competitive with the 285K.

Now, we'll have to look at comparing it to some AMD options to see who takes the high-performance mobile CPU crown. Stay tuned!